Up in the air and down in the ground

Wednesday June 15 

The kids jumped out of bed this morning at 2:45 just like it was their usual at home 11:00 beauty sleep wake up. There was no jumping but neither was there any complaining, I think zombie mode is my preferred early morning attitude for them.

It was ballooning day and the balloon trip was great. I had seen these launch hundreds if not thousands of times as a kid. The Chicago area Windy City Balloon Port was colocated where I spent my summers ski jumping at Norge Ski Club. I can understand the passion now, what a cool experience.

This was a big balloon with a 20 person basket, we had about 18 folks and the Huth family had there own section of about 1/5 of the basket. They were able to land that basket right on the trailer. Pretty impressive, but I guess that's the only way, that thing has to weigh a bunch. 

This was a four burner beast and when it breathed is was a sight to see.

After the ballooning we began to do some replanning as we were thinking the kids needed a few more hours of sleep so we would not be taking them on the planned 16 hour hike. We also discovered that this was a leap trip - that Patti had planned in our last Friday twice - we now were working on squeezing 5 days into 4. With that we decided we would visit the open air museum of an ancient cave church complex. 

There are some amazingly preserved churches in the rock here. Flash photography has long been the bane of pigment longevity and as such cameras were not allowed as many folks do not know how to keep their flash under control. Tara, however, just held  her phone by her side and would snap the shutter with some random intentionality, sans flash of course.

When I tried it I first got this butt shot, such a great memory.

When I was a little more careful I got a few shots that fail to do justice to what the eyes take in.

At one point I did hold my phone up a bit and was asked to put it away. Tara said that I blew her cover, I just think I drew the authorities away from her ;-).

Cave construction is more like carving than like building. What an interesting way to use the natural features of this region rather then trying to duplicate block on block construction as found in most other places.

After lunch we set out for a hike in the Rose valley where there are cave churches that are there for self guided exploration. The museum we visited earlier is a World Heritage Site and as such protected by security etc. The churches that we found on our hike are just out there to explore however you see fit. We all thought this second option was great. Only ran into about a half dozen people, two of whom just got engaged, that was cool. They were so happy to see us as they wanted to recreate the moment and capture it in digital image.

The first church required a little bouldering to get into, I would call it a soft V2. Inside it was interesting but nothing like the museum, as one would expect.

The second one required a little scrambling and care so as not to scrape your way down the rock face to the valley floor. This one was more ornate and had a lot of connected rooms and things to explore.

The last one we found was the most well preserved of all.

This hike did not have that much total elevation gain, however the majority of it was steep scrambles and one section required using a rope assist. When Patti was describing our next hike to the girls she said it was pretty flat to which Riley replied "Can we trust the word flat anymore?'.

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